Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

KEY LESSONS
What we don’t know can kill us or our deals. But

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uncovering it can totally change the course of a negotiation
and bring us unexpected success.
Finding the Black Swans—those powerful unknown
unknowns—is intrinsically difficult, however, for the simple
reason that we don’t know the questions to ask. Because we
don’t know what the treasure is, we don’t know where to
dig.
Here are some of the best techniques for flushing out the
Black Swans—and exploiting them. Remember, your
counterpart might not even know how important the
information is, or even that they shouldn’t reveal it. So keep
pushing, probing, and gathering information.
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Let what you know—your known knowns
—guide you but not blind you. Every case is
new,
so
remain
flexible
and
adaptable.
Remember the Griffin bank crisis: no hostage-
taker had killed a hostage on deadline, until he
did.
■
Black Swans are leverage multipliers. Remember
the three types of leverage: positive (the ability to
give someone what they want); negative (the
ability to hurt someone); and normative (using
your counterpart’s norms to bring them around).
■
Work to understand the other side’s “religion.”
Digging into worldviews inherently implies
moving beyond the negotiating table and into the

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life,
emotional
and
otherwise,
of
your
counterpart. That’s where Black Swans live.
■
Review everything you hear from your
counterpart. You will not hear everything the
first time, so double-check. Compare notes with
team members. Use backup listeners whose job
is to listen between the lines. They will hear
things you miss.
■
Exploit the similarity principle. People are more
apt to concede to someone they share a cultural
similarity with, so dig for what makes them tick
and show that you share common ground.
■
When someone seems irrational or crazy, they
most likely aren’t. Faced with this situation,
search for constraints, hidden desires, and bad
information.
■
Get face time with your counterpart. Ten minutes
of face time often reveals more than days of
research.
Pay
special
attention
to
your
counterpart’s
verbal
and
nonverbal
communication at unguarded moments—at the
beginning and the end of the session or when
someone says something out of line.

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